Author: Sarah Northway

Gah, I just had a second wonderful long bath ruined by inconsiderate ants. Nothing is better for insomnia but reading in a nice long bath (I’ve noticed we’re both a little rank lately so the longer the better really). I borrowed Clive Barker’s Galilee from the Chills guys, and after a dozen afternoons in the hammock and a few long sleepless nights, there is no sign of nearing the end of it. It’s… well it’s a long book anyway. Good weight to price ratio I guess.

So after like five hours of turning my toes to prunes and remarking at the amount of gunk in the water that wasn’t there when I got in, I’m finally feeling peaceful and sleepy enough to go to bed. I get out, towel off, and spy a blurry line on the wall opposite.

I didn’t take this,
I only wish I didI get closer – no glasses – ants! And of course it would be those nasty red guys; they bite like a bitch if they get between your toes, unlike the mostly harmless tiny ones that seem omnipresent here and don’t form lines so much as spontaneously generate on an abandoned food source. I don’t know how the red ones got there and I don’t know what they expect to find, but they’ve been foraging like this around the bathroom for weeks. This time the line seems a little denser, so I follow it to see if they’ve finally found something.

The ant conga goes up around the shower then across the wall, passing behind my toiletries bag that is hanging from a hook there. I see a few of them on one corner of the bag where it touches the wall and I go to brush them off with my hand. This is when the bag – a large black travel bag with zippered compartments – finally comes into focus.

It is fucking crawling with the little devils. The line on the wall is maybe four ants abreast, but there are hundreds upon hundreds crawling over the face of the bag looking for an opening. Ug, I realize, I’d put an opened Halls package in there the other day after I found an ant investigating it. I disloge a bunch of them with a brush and unzip a corner of the biggest compartment to confirm the worst. What the hell, did they decide to move their whole nest in there or what??

And so my wrath was upon them! I sprayed that bitch down with the shower, sending thousands of ants running furiously away. Thinking I’d got most I grabbed the bag by the hook, then realized almost too late that they were hiding on the underside – coating it like a shiny undulating mat – as they came running up the hook to my hand.

I didn’t take this either,
but this is how pissed they wereCunning maneouver, yes, but nothing against one who has mastered the use of tools! I sprayed it down again then used a mop handle to move the mess into a bucket and put it outside on the deck. I considered freezing the bastards as I do sometimes (it is most effective on the tiny guys if you don’t mind a little anty “seasoning” on your salvaged food) but it was too big. I’m just hoping they’ll all have wandered away by morning, unless their queen really is in there snacking on ginger Halls.

Yes, I did consider taking a picture before I gave them the hose, but I had such a reaction of sickness and anger to the squirming mess that I acted in kind of a rage. I don’t know why ants get me like that… I guess it must be the same way it is with spiders. I really like most insects and would usually be happy to sit and watch such an example of nature’s ingenuity, or what have you. But when they’re all over, and in your stuff like that, not to mention on your skin and biting you (only one bite on my foot this time luckily, and he suffered greatly for it).

Erg, I get the shutters just thinking of it. I’m still finding the bloody things crawling on me (or at least feeling them). I am sooo happy I didn’t go looking for lip balm or something and blindly stick my hand in the bag before I saw them; I can’t belive how fast they can coat your skin when they are pissed off. And I swear they wait until one ant gives the signal for them all to bite at once. I’m more okay when this happens out in the woods, but Sarah will not abide their presence in her home!

Mum and Pup
Originally uploaded by apes_abroad.

Thx Lawrence for letting me know I could get a real Flickr address. I found the “blog this photo” function while I was in there. So, here’s a photo of dogs, I’m blogging it.

Colin has been taking lots of texture shots lately, which are pretty, but I’m finding it’s hard to top a puppy as a photo subject. Our harddrive is quickly filling up with 8 meg raws of a banana leaf taken from 5 different angles at 5 different exposures. Although, some of them… do look damn good.

I’m glad we got a digital cam; it’s so easy to play around like that. I don’t know how Alan does it – out of every roll of film I’ve seen from him, half the photos are just incredible, and he takes at most a couple pictures of anything. Colin’s all on about getting another lens, but after the crazyawesomeness of Alan’s fisheye shots, seems like it will be hard to beat.

But then, Colin’s spent weeks researching this stuff, and I still get math headaches when he tries to explain f-stops and aperture settings and whatnot. So what do I know, really, except tired puppies is cute. :)

Yah, so, I’ve been playing a lot of Neverwinter Nights 2 lately. It rained for a few days there and now Colin is (fingers crossed) getting his Kiteboarding on. I’d say I was disappointed in the game, but I hadn’t really got my hopes up that high. The main problem is I dislike the D&D system; I don’t like seeing and thinking about numbers all the time since it kind of detracts from the immersion in an RPG. You know, detracts from the role… playing.

The spunky half-demon whose
(miscredited) voice won my heartI did play the hell out of the first NWN but felt the same way. To be clear – I’m talking about the single player campaign in both cases here. I never had much interest in trying a human-DMed game, and couldn’t now anyway (satellite connection). I understand it’s a pretty unique feature and I hope people are taking advantage of it. Any game that ships with the toolset is good stuff, and NWN is practically the other way around; it shipped with a demo campaign that is good enough for your money’s worth.

Compared to the first Neverwinter, I’m not sure much has changed. Seems like they tweaked the interface a bit and wrote a new campaign very much like the original. Very much like all the Bioware games. They did a good job on the NPCs though; I like some of the voices and there is a lot of spoken dialogue. I’m reminded of Baldur’s Gate which may have been Bioware’s best; although the Star Wars universe in KOTOR made it my favorite.

Interesting: 1up posted a very negative review of NWN2 then removed it with apology. Penny Arcade has a copy of it, which mostly I agree with, except maybe about the acting. A few of the voices are really bad, but it sure beats first season Babylon 5 which Colin is now suffering through. “Don’t touch me unless you mean it” – now who could screw that kind of amazing dialogue up?

So I haven’t mentioned this but the island has been sending me emails since I got here.

It’s cute. They write in broken english in all caps. I think it’s Barrett because it seems like his kind of game. But when the first one was sent (from gmail) both Andy and Ryan where online at the time. So they where first targets. Pete has god speak in all caps in his book (which I still haven’t read, sorry Pete I’m a bad person!) so that implicates him. And the most recent bit feels a little ‘Yes Man’ which I know Alan has read, and I think he’s read Pete’s book as well. So he’s on the list. Anyway all the emails come out at extremely late hours thai-time when any respecting Island would be asleep. Listen here: I expect the next one to be sent at 3 in the morning your time or I will not be impressed!

The first few where all like ‘justify your existance on the island’ (kind of red dwarf style, which I know Alan has seen, and Ryan has recently made other refrences to). But then I put them on the defensive for a while (more easily than expected which leans against Pete and Alan who, being younger brothers, are masters of the rhetorical argument). The most recent one has, in a clumbsy attempt to regain the upper hand, sent me on a quest. To Wat somethingorother. I don’t remember the name and as I write this the intertubes are clogged (probably with online gambling and too many internets). A Wat on the island that features on only one of the six maps we have checked of the island.

So OK, if the emails are going to be interesting I figure I might as well play along. The Island asked me for photographic proof that I had visited the Wat and I was tempted to just drive out to the high-school or something and click a picture there knowing that whoever was behind this would be none the wiser but what the hell.

So I set off alone (Sarah wasn’t so into the random task, or should I call it an odd job?). I have been down the road that the Wat is supposed to be on. It’s the road to the Phaeng Waterfalls that are so lack-luster (a middle-aged couple from campbell river we met earlier in the day and then again in the falls parking-lot agreed). I didn’t remember passing any temples last time we where on the road.

So I dutifully drive out there, along a cross road I have never been on before through some very nice palm plantations. And get to the falls having seen nothing like a Wat. I drive up and down the stretch of road it’s supposed to be on a couple of times to no avail. I end up just taking a picture of this big house on the road, deciding to claim that was the Wat. I could have photoshopped in some monks or something after the fact. So I had plan B under my belt but I wasn’t going to give up the search that easily. I rode back along the road very slowly peering through the jungle/palm plantaions and just managed to pick out a rocky spire 100 meters off the road. So I parked my bike and hiked through the jungle/palm plantation towards the spire. I got a decent view of it from the other side of a barbed wire fence. And snapped a picture. Which I’m sure would have saisified whoever, but as long as I’m here I might as well check the place out. So I walked along the barbed wire fence figuring hopping the fence into the place of Buddhist medatation in a 90% Buddhist country was a bad idea. Lukily through someone’s back yeard I found a gap.

There are definitely perks to the camera. I feel pretty confortable wandering around anywhere. If someone stops me and asks me why the hell I’m wandering through their back-yard I figure I can just hold up the camera and be like I’m taking pictures of birds or something. Plus I have learned that people really enjoy having their picture taken so if your next move is pointing at them with the international ‘can I take your picture’ motion then your out of any trouble you were in and well on your way to getting a lift back into town.

So noone asked my I was in their back-yard or their jungle/palm plantation so my occasional half-hearted show of taking pictures of plants was unecessary.

Yes so wandering into the Wat complex I noticed the big stone building, the temple proper, a nice fancy bell, and some out-buildings. All seemed abandoned. I took some pictures of some very pretty stuff and was walking along the side of the temple and woke up a monk sleeping on the balcony of a little wooden bungalow. I said Sawat Dee Krap and he offered my a drink of water and a place to sit on the balcony. Well you don’t say no to that!

So my afternoon was pretty cool. I ended up talking to Pon for quite a while. He’s a really cool guy, monk. He used to be quite the hell-raiser. He lived on Koh Tao working for a restaurant. But on the side he sold Marajuana, Mushrooms, Opium (!) and a few other things I can’t remember. He says it’s a good thing he became a monk or he’d probably be dead from drinking or fighting. It was a good conversation. We laughed alot. He broke down the pricing structure of mushrooms and marajuana on the various islands in southern thailand (information I will not be availing myself of due to a proper upbringing… and draconian thai drug laws).

He has a girldfriend in Germany named Anna but a monkey ate his sim card so he hasn’t been able to call her. This distresses him greatly. He showed me the 1/2 eaten sim card and asked if I thought someone in an office somewhere could get her number off of it. I said I doubted it. Although if Anna from Munich kept a blog of her trip to Koh Phangan I might be able to find her. Worth a try when the tubes are clear again.

You know monks here can’t eat after 10 am? Good god. Pon says it’s hard for the first three months. He also says it’s no good to have a fat monk.

Apparently alot of people spend a year or two as a monk. Pon is doing two because ‘he needs it’. He says he isn’t going to go back to selling and boozing. He’s going to rent a nice big plot of land from his family and put up a bungalo.

Fun time. I am also pleased to say that the third cigarete I have ever smoked was offered my by a Buddhist monk (hand rolled by a Buddhist monk in coconut bark, take that cuban maiden’s thigh!)

On the way back I was feeling pretty pleased with the world. I even managed to help some lost french tourists on the way back home. And used french for the first time ever talking to a french person: ‘bon chance’.

What I can’t figure out though is if the quest means I should become a Buddhist monk or I should take up smoking.

As Colin mentioned, we skipped out on the Full Moon Party this month. Actually we were going to go, but consulted an out of date calendar and ended up down there a day early. The moon was technically full but it was also the King’s birthday, a national holiday, with one of the observations being to not drink or serve alcohol. Naturally the party was delayed one night, so instead we got to see what Haad Rin looked like the day before FMP.

The shops there are more expensive but have rarer stuff so we did some shopping, and watched a couple movies over dinner. Most of the bars there were showing movies; some even had cams of Borat and Casino Royale but we passed on those. Two, not twenty feet from each other, were playing Friends episodes all day. Every day I imagine.

Haad Rin does have a beautiful beach, and we snagged some choice spots to watch the moon reflecting on the ocean and the surf and have a few drinks (not everyone was witholding booze, just some places). We met a few fellow Canucks down there, but in general everyone was just chilling and conserving their energy.

So then the real party rolled around last night and it was still coming down hard after a day of steady rain, so we said fuck it and were asleep before the taxis we would have taken even came by.

Raining again today and I don’t have much to do but play NWN2. I should have started working on the 1st, but am still waiting for Salus to get organized. Sound familiar? In the last month I’ve gotten interview offers from some interesting companies. None would be willing to let me work from here so they’re out of the question, but Google was in there, and today, okay, this from M$:

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Hahahahahaha no.